Bread of the Month

I had big goals to make Dutch Oven Crusty Bread for this month's Bread of the Month. But thinking that might not happen, and being in the mood for fresh & easy bread, I made my old stand-by recipe. I made one vital mistake, though, and the bread came out of the oven looking like a deflated mushroom. But it still tastes good, especially when used to sop up Vegetable Soup (like I'm doing right now). Here is the recipe:

Mindi's Sandwich Bread
2 1/4 cups water
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white flour
2 Tbsp. ground flax seeds
3 Tbsp. dry milk
3 Tbsp. honey
2 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. butter
4 tsp. yeast

I toss all ingredients in order into a bread machine on the "dough" setting, then shape into 2 bread loaves. You could also do it all by hand (if you are feeling hippieish like that you have to read "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book". It tells you everything you need to know about kneading and shaping bread). The mistake I made with these loaves took place during the final rise. I used to spray one side of a sheet of plastic wrap with "Pam" then put the oil side down on top of my rising bread. Then cover the whole of it with a towel and place in a warm oven for 30 minutes or so. But then I stopped using "Pam" because I'm a wacko and just put some vegetable oil on a paper towel and smeared it on the plastic wrap (and the bread pans before putting the dough in). Well, I had put Sierra in charge of this process and there wasn't enough oil on the plastic wrap so that stuck to my dough, deflating it when I pulled the plastic off before putting dough in oven. Sigh. But I just decided to cut the "upper crust" off and pretend I was 17th century royalty (ever read "The Girl With The Pearl Earring" ?)